Both found guilty of murder.

Aye it seemed obvious but you never know in a trial.

Good!!!!

Some of details are horrific reminiscent of kids who killed Jamie Bulger.

To torture the woman to such a level is beyond comprehension but I bet there are a lot of people in the town who took the piss and laughed at her. A shame no one thought to help the lass.

Shocking and disturbing reading that. The most disturbing is the way they acted afterwards and then to be pointing the finger at each other afterwards in court just sums it up.

Clearly there's been a huge societal trainwreck for something like this to be possible. But let's keep the blame where it belongs. The murderers were in care and if that's care I'd hate to know what careless is. They can't have sprouted psycho-sadistic tendencies overnight.

It's sickening to read, not just about the actual attack, but the way they seemed to reacted during and after it. Showing zero remorse, laughing and joking about when the Police arrived and then taking photo's as if they are on a fun night out!

I was thinking about the treatment of the likes of Lawrence and 'Dizzy Sharon'. Clearly nowhere near these levels but there is a pattern.

With the current autism awareness campaign, I was thinking along similar lines. You see people with autism on documentaries and think how can people treat them/bully them as they do?

Then you think of the 'difficult' people you know yourself, whom you try to steer clear of, and realise you do more or less the same yourself. Of course, that's a far cry from killing them, but.......

Its a tragedy on all levels a woman who had a shitty awful life has been killed by two kids who had a shitty awful life what sort of an upbringing have you actually had if you have such a loose grip on actions having consequences and what is right and wrong?

No winners in story, even the victim is probably better off dead. I'm not sure you can compare her situation or Lawrence I'd imagine plenty of places exist in the country were he'd have been given a far harder time than he was by the people of Hartlepool. Every Town or City has these people, rightly or wrongly the vast majority of people give them a wide berth. In fact this woman although clearly vulnerable was actually more than a bit of a nuisance.

Life has failed them all.

Spot on Chip. Child social care is criminally underfunded, whilst at the same time the government is encouraging the growth of private fostering agencies who charge local authorities a small fortune to look after kids.

You're right Chip, but there are a hell of a lot that don't get into all that shit, and the damage is limited thanks to good foster carers.

I know a lad who was taken into care at 5 and could hardly speak let alone read or write. He is now doing a law degree, recently qualified as a PCSO on a scheme to fast track him into specialist areas of policing. He is the exception rather than the norm, but there's no way he'd be where he is now without his foster family.

If you're working with the young offenders you'll be at the sharp end. It amazes me how some foster carers get results given the damage done to some of the kids, but a lot of them do.

Well, good care or bad care aside, the cruelty they inflicted on the poor woman suggests they regarded her as something less than human, not unlike the way the colonials used to treat them damned wogs.
That they had to be sentenced to life imprisonment before they shed a tear makes me think they probably still don't believe what they did was that big a deal.

They've been convicted of murder. Life Imprisonment is the only sentence available for such a heinous crime.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

My uncle and Aunty have been fostering for about ten years and some of the kids they have had where really damaged and couldn't understand people wanting to be nice to them or giving them a good life. One actually asked me why I was being nice to him as I didn't know him I bought him a can of Coke when we where at the park. Seeing these kids makes you realise how lucky you are and also what great people my uncle and Aunty are

Truly evil what some people do to their kids. Who often do similar things to their own kids, and their kids and so on. If there was more money for intervention such as fostering the cycles might get broken a bit more often.

The sentence is due on Thursday.
I'm not sure where I got the life imprisonment idea from. Probably the Daily Mail’s hornblowing.
That doesn't change my belief that the tears weren't tears of remorse mind.

I 'm sure the BBC coverage on the web said the Judge had told them to expect a life sentence. They deserve longer.

And ended up living near Mr PIN in Stapleford, Nottm.

Straight up?

Scarily disturbing on so many levels. Worrying that like the Bulger killers they may never serve time in an adult prison. Common knowledge that one appears reformed and one clearly has not and been imprisoned on two further occasions. By the same token Mary Bell did serve time in an adult prison and when released has lived a flawless life.

I think this is symptamatic of the generic way we as a populace view people who are a bit 'different' in this country. While alcholism and autism are two clearly very different things if people don't educate themselves and are ignorant to it these kind of situations will keep cropping up more and more.

Yep.
I think many of us are tolerant of people who are a bit 'different', but when it comes to actually helping them, on a one-to-one basis, it's different. A lot of time is needed, and the willingness to have your own life disrupted to quite an extent.

I think the fact that no-one was doing that for Angela led the girls to think she was open game. Anyway, Social Services are now looking into how it came about that Angela was known to them and yet was unsupported. (But you can't really blame them, either, when they don't have enough staff or funds.)

Thompson did yes.

i looked after the catering unit at Sleaford in Lincs for 6 months between Jan and june last year, 18 bed secure unit for people under 18 and I saw some antics which were unpleasant
They get breakfast at 8.30, juice and biscuits at 10, lunch at 12.30 and 1, juice and biscuit at 3, dinner at 5 and 5.30, supper at 8.

I had to cover a weekend when the cook was off ill, i had seen some of them previously and knew the working procedures, however any deviation and the fuckers go off like your wife when she smells others perfume in your ball hair!

They are served behind a barred unit with a gap underneath, they pre order what they want and what time they are served, kept seperate for ones who fight with each other and hot drinks have to be cooled because they throw them at staff

Anyway, this chubby girl comes up and said " who the fuck are you?", I said " John the area manager covering for Diane", " I hope you cook better than that ugly fat 'lovely lovely person'" said the silver tongued lass, she said "where you from", "Hartlepool" I replied, " No fucking way, can you make parmo`s?"

One thing they did have was enough staff, all over the place and teachers came in and they had proper school lessons, interactive stuff and day passesout for the ones coming to the end of sentence, although 2 that were released came back within a month for reoffending!!

The lovely girl was one of the two who performed the ghastly attack, she was a foul mouthed, aggressive person, they shout constantly, throw food and strop if they don`t get what they want, bit like kids at home really.

I felt sorry for a few of them, they were put in there for their own protection due to parental issues, mixing with the murderous types would not have helped them I feel.

I've always tried to respect and help people in difficulty, and I'm a very patient person, but when the response is systematic aggression, I'm afraid I'm out.
Reading the reports about Angela, I get the impression anyone helping her really had to take the rough with the smooth. On face value (these are journalistic reports after all), I can't guarantee she would have stayed within my tolerance threshold. But unless she ate babies for breakfast I would never have wished her harm.
As for the two horrors that murdered her, sometimes you just have to accept that some people are complete and utter bastards.

I can fully accept the idea of diminished responsibility for kids, who are always liable to do something daft and reckless at the drop of a hat which may well have tragic consequences. What I have great difficulty accepting is that it can diminish to the point where intentionally subjecting a helpless woman to a slow, sadistic, humiliating death is any less conscionable for a 13/14 year old than it is for an adult.

After this and now the case of Norma Bell, who almost ironically was a serial foster mother, Hartlepool is beginning to sound like some kind of Horror Channel testing ground. God help us.

The tale gets sorrier ......


Two teenage girls have been found guilty of murdering 39-year-old Angela Wrightson in a brutal attack in her own home. If she had been killed by adults, would this tragic story have been told?
In many ways Angela Wrightson fitted the stereotype of a typical victim - an alcohol-dependent female attacked in her own home by people she knew.
It's a profile which often triggers criticism of agencies - she was a vulnerable woman left to struggle alone, forgotten by authorities and dismissed as an aggressive drunk who had never worked.
But this was not the case. She was in regular contact with agencies in Hartlepool, and offered frequent help and support.
Ms Wrightson had a social worker who would visit her often and try to make sure money was spent on food and toiletries rather than alcohol. Her rent was paid by the council direct to the landlord, so a roof was kept over her head.
In court a picture emerged of what professionals often describe as a "chaotic life", one of a woman known to the police for her anti-social behaviour and to the ambulance service for making hoax calls.
She had been in and out of prison, had 47 criminal convictions, been subject to an alcohol purchasing order, had a number of Asbos, and frequently got into fights. Neighbours say she usually had bruises on her face.
About 48 hours before she was killed she had sustained a serious head injury, a pathologist said, although it did not contribute to her death. There was evidence of brain damage from an even earlier head trauma.
She was well-known in the Hartlepool area as "Alco Ange" - drinking at least nine litres of strong cider every day - and was often to be found lying in the middle of the road.
Like her killers, Ms Wrightson had a difficult background. She and her eight siblings were all brought up separately in care, and she remained estranged from her family. Only after she died did her mother and aunt reappear into her world, occasionally attending the trial.
A post-mortem examination found evidence of early self-harming and cirrhosis of the liver. She was covered in home-made tattoos, including a cross on her face.
Carol Anne Davis, who in her book Children Who Kill profiled killers aged between 10 and 17, says many victims of child murderers resemble "a hated figure from their past".
It's not a giant leap to suggest Ms Wrightson might have been a foreshadow of an equally hated figure from their own future.
The girls were already heavy drinkers, in trouble with the police, hanging around the streets.
In court, defence barrister Jamie Hill QC described the night as "just a terrible moment in history when these three people collided in the most appalling and tragic way".
At the trial, details of a Dickensian cast of characters emerged - tens of people, including "Mad Molly", "Goofy" and "Cider Bill" would go to her home in Stephen Street at all hours of the day and night. They would not bother knocking.
Groups of youths started dropping by first thing in the morning so she could buy them cigarettes. Underage drinkers congregated in her living room and on the proviso she could share their drink, she would buy them alcohol from the local shop - where three-litre bottles of 7.5% cider can be bought for about £3.
Sometimes she called a neighbour "to make the kids scatter" when they ignored her pleas to leave.
On the day she died, Ms Wrightson argued with her landlord, John Meggison, because he refused to buy her alcohol. She threw her keys at him a number of times. Eventually, he left with them and returned to the street the following morning to give them back.
That's when he found her body.
When Mr Meggison saw her there was no doubt in his mind Ms Wrightson was dead. The 39-year-old was surrounded by broken furniture, scattered blood-stained implements, and covered in shards of broken glass. She had hundreds of injuries, was naked from the waist down, and had bled out over the sofa on which she had been placed.
It was a brutal end to a troubled life.
Ms Wrightson had preferred prison to being "on the out". According to Donna Jenkins, who met her in jail, "Angie was a lost soul who found life easier inside. She'd become largely institutionalised".
Her position as laundrywoman was "the first time she had felt valued", Ms Jenkins adds.
Upon her last release from prison in 2011, Ms Wrightson, originally from Darlington, moved to Hartlepool for a fresh start.
Ms Jenkins says "it was the happiest time of Angie's life". She had a boyfriend, and became friendly with some local dog owners.
Then her boyfriend died from alcohol related problems, leaving her "heartbroken".
From that point, her condition worsened and people began using her home, the trial heard, as a "doss house". They stole money and mobile phones from her. She stopped buying food and instead spent her benefits on alcohol - she weighed about six stone when she died and by common consensus looked a lot older than her 39 years.
Ms Wrightson would begin drinking as soon as she woke up and would carry on until she crashed out, rarely using any part of the house other than her living room, sleeping on the sofa.
But the darkness and confusion of Ms Wrightson's life was punctured by small pinpricks of kindness. She would buy chocolate bars when she was buying cider, and poke them through the letterbox for the young son of a neighbour.
She loved animals, and looked after an acquaintance's Alsatian for three weeks, which gave her a purpose and stemmed her drinking.
She was devastated when she had to give it back.
She was described as house-proud, filling her home with china knick-knacks and teddy bears from the local second-hand shop. Pictures hung on her walls and her kitchen was neat and tidy, if a little bare, because she sold many of her items for drink money.
It was easy to take advantage of Ms Wrightson. Her usual behaviour inspired neither friendship nor loyalty.
When drunk she was out of control and unlikeable. Once, wielding a metal bar, she chased a girl down the street. She would call her landlord with fictional problems - saying windows had been broken when they had not, and then threatening to break them herself if he did not do what she wanted.
Her life was knotted with seemingly trivial arguments: Who stole whose tobacco; who was badmouthing whom; whose turn was it to buy drink.
Her neighbour Siobhan Quinn says Ms Wrightson would sometimes cry and claim she had no family at all. She would telephone Ms Quinn to say she had no electricity, or her microwave was broken.
"Angie craved company, that's why she caused havoc sometimes. That's why she would call me and get me to the house. She was just lonely," she adds.
In an attempt to assuage the loneliness, Ms Wrightson would allow a steady stream of people into her home, but of the many who wandered through her door, no-one really seemed to be concerned.
At about 23:00 on the night of 8 December, her sometime drinking companions Tracey Gascoigne and Melanie Moon banged and shouted at her window, wanting to be let in to drink.
At that point, Ms Wrightson was inside - and so were the two killers, hiding in the bathroom.
She was unable to call for help. She was either unconscious or already dead.
Ms Moon impatiently tried Ms Wrightson's front door, which was unlocked. She put her head round and saw the devastation within the living room.
She shouted to Ms Gascoigne: "Someone's wrecked Angie's house - you should see the state of it."
The reply came back: "I don't care."
There were chances to save Angela Wrightson - many of which were sabotaged by herself.
In 2009 she was banned from buying alcohol. The Safer Hartlepool Anti-Social Behaviour Unit says she "consistently refused to engage" with the support she was offered over a number of years. She also "refused to stop her drunk and disorderly behaviour".
And she ignored the ban.
In 2012, Ms Wrightson spent about eight months at a residential facility where she was helped to get sober. She was doing well - until she worked out a way to leave and buy drink. On several occasions she returned to the unit drunk and aggressive, and the police were called.
In 2013, her care team managed to secure funding for her to go into a rehabilitation retreat near York. Her social worker drove her there and settled her in.
Within 24 hours Ms Wrightson took a taxi back home because she "was desperate for a drink".
There were many attempts to get her back into the retreat, but she kept leaving. Before long the opportunity was gone.
Angela Wrightson's story is not unusual.
The local area profiles for England indicate the levels of alcohol-related harm in Hartlepool are among the highest in the UK. The town is ranked 320th out of 326 local authority areas for the percentage of at-risk drinkers in the population.
Stephen Street is a run-down road where a significant number of houses are boarded up, and more than a quarter of occupied households are categorised as "economically inactive" - meaning residents are neither in work nor seeking employment.
Men and women clutching cans of strong lager and cider gather in grimy doorways and the nearby car park and graveyard.
The crime rate in Hartlepool is high, especially anti-social behaviour, violent crime and criminal damage. On Stephen Street, one woman was jailed for biting a police officer, another for dealing cocaine, another for arson.
The Institute of Alcohol Studies has previously outlined study findings that alcohol is involved in nearly half of all violent crimes.
Situations in which people get drunk are more likely to flare into violence, and Angela Wrightson was on both the giving and receiving end of arguments that culminated in physical altercation.
In 2014, the year Ms Wrightson was killed, there were 515 cases of murder or manslaughter in England and Wales. Few capture the full attention of the media.
If she had not been the victim of teenage girls, the difficult truth is her tragic story may not have been told.

I posted something similar to this earlier and then deleted it but think I should share. The way she died was horrific and I feel very sorry for her and also for the life she led. I do get annoyed with the general outpouring of grief you see in the press when she is exactly the type of person who if alive today would be shunned and looked down upon. When people die hardly ever is anything bad said against them but as evidenced above, she also caused plenty of trouble.

My brother in law lived next door to her about 7 or 8 years ago and she used to post little notes through his door that would say she was going to burn his house down and kill his baby. (these are obviously the actions of a women that s unable to control herself). We stayed and looked after the nephew on new years eve and sure enough the little notes came through the door. She would also sit and scream horrible things from next door and these would include things about killing his baby. Anyway, the police where aware of this and where again called and she was warned.

I also drove down stephen street once to find her asleep in the middle of the road and again the police had to be called. She led a troubled life and if an afterlife does exist I hope she has a better time than she did in this one.

The worst thing about this is 3 lives ruined.

It does make you realise people can rarely do anything about most of the problems they try to solve. You spend ages worrying/thinking about problems, and trying ways to put them right, then they go ahead and happen anyway.

Pessimistic thought for the day.....

Thing is, people have to want to be helped. There can be as much support on offer as you like, but if you don't actually want to give up an addiction, you're not gonna do it!

So both given life sentences with a minimum stretch of 15 years.

Probably be the first time either of them have been looked after or bothered with by anybody.

The girls IMHO should have tougher sentences, but I am not a Judge.

As for Angela, I have had a few pints with my mate today and the topic came up. She was brought up in Bishop, my mate went to Primary and secondary school with her. At both, my mate says she had behavioural problems and was violent. I had no recollection (being a bit older) until he reminded me of when the Head of the Lower School was pushed down the stairs by a girl, and when at the bottom his leg was stamped on. The result a broken leg and 2 broken hips. Still couldn't picture her until fast forward a few years I remembered the girl with the tatoo (a cross) on her forehead, and a skin head, loads of other homemade tattoos elsewhere, always pissed and looking aggressive, the type of person you cross the road to miss, just in case.
My mate said funnily, when she first left school and started drinking she calmed down, maybe due to the lack of contact with her mother previously as her mother was in the pub drinking, which now they could share a hobby, drinking.

Don't know what happened after that.

There really is no upside in any aspect of this case. Very sad.

There are/were quite a few problem drinkers in my extended family, many of whom drank themselves to death at an early age. I think it is genetic, I can't explain why some of them could be social drinkers, but their brothers/sisters couldn't stop themselves.

I love a good drink but I know when to stop. Hopefully none of mine or my sister's kids will be susceptible to addictions.

Sadly true.

Do they still try to beat you up like they did when I was in Hartlepool? It was quite funny when some 110% blaked alco-toughy acted like he was Sonny Liston. As long as you were sure he didn't have a knife or twenty mates like.

Spot on.

I havent drank for 4 years, yet normally sane people think I am a nutter for not drinking. And try to force it down your neck. Stupid c unts.

i've been out a few times and havent drank lately, went the park inn for a night with my brother and out with the footy lads on a sunday and stayed sober, your looked at like your weird or something.

"you mean your not drinking?, mental you"

Passing my driving test 2 year ago was one of the best things to ever happen to me for a number of reasons. One of them being able to go out and socialise with mates and not drink as i'd take the car. I don't anywhere near as much as I used to these days, even when I do it's only a couple.

When you stop drinking you also get see how fucking normally OK people become complete arseholes. I hate being around them now, so tend toavoid pub nights out.

Dont miss it, and dont like talking to people too pissed get their words out properly.

Some very good factors there dibbs and chip.

My eldest son hates me drinking as he knows ill not be able to see him the next day n will just stay in bed till about 4 or be grumpy.

Nothing brings home your actions like your kids realising it.

As dibbs also says, watching your mates pissed n acting daft makes you think ffs is that how drunk people act?

I'll have a drink 3/4 times a year max but i dont miss it in between.

Now't wrong with a drink, as always its the excess that does damage. I have to admit to a glass of wine with dinner most evenings. In fact forget most, pretty much every evening.

Same here. I think a huge factor here is personal responsibility and the understanding that we are alone - alone - answerable for our actions. I am someone you could probably describe as being alcohol dependent if you were looking at those factors that mean you "need" alcohol to relax, etc.

But I'm talking one 175ml glass of wine a night, maybe three on a weekend. Not a whole bottle or two.

At the end of the day, we all have choices to make about the pros, cons and consequences of our actions. Unfortunately, there are those who have lost their ability to do that for themselves because their inhibitions have deserted them for what ever reason. Maybe they have an addictive personality, maybe mental health issues have robbed them of making rational choices, maybe circumstance has thrust such a crappy turn of events upon them that they can't face reality without the edge taken off.

The sad thing is, society is very black and white at times.

People can drink regularly and be dependent on drink without being alcoholics and without binging. Equally, those people who are alcoholics haven't always made rational choices to do what they do.

But I still believe in personal responsibility. If we emphasised this a little more as a society, maybe we'd think twice before we were either hypocritical or before we ventured down a road we knew was dark and full of terrors.

I don't know.

I think it's an illness really. Some people seem to he genetically prone to it, and if their circumstances aren't good, it is something that happens.

When you've seen someone who literally cannot stop themselves drinking to their death despite loads of support and intervention, that's the only explanation I can come up with.